THWC 413: PSA, Fanatics and the War that is Coming

What is up, everybody? Hobby with Cage, episode 413 brought to you by Arena Club by card ladder use code Cage. Save yourself a couple dollars on your subscriptions. And by the Philly Show. Actually, you know, excited about that. The next Philly Show. It's gonna be fun. They always have good autograph guests. But that's not what we're here to talk about today because we got so many awesome shows coming up. So much great news to talk about record sales. Hopefully you guys checked out my news from yesterday. You know, what a fun news day. Got a little Fanatics in there, you got a little national in there, you got a little record sales in there, you got a little LeBron free agency tees in there. We have a lot to talk about as we sit here. Amazingly, 413 solo episodes of these. You find this one on July 1st. Yes, the calendar has turned, which means we're going to have some fun. You know, gem rate reports. We're going to see, you know, how many cards have sold on ebay and how many, how much, you know, the volume was last month and whether it was a record golden obviously helped. At the end of the month, they had like 57 auctions and some of them, you know, had multi million dollar sales in them. So, you know, I'm going to be excited to see kind of the monthly data when that comes out. But July is a biggie because in July you have both Fanatics Fest and the National. And this is my. This will be my third Fanatics Fest. There have only been three of them. I go to all of them. I've been to every day of them. I'll be at all four days of this Fanatics Fest. I will be at the national again. I don't even know how many nationals this is for me. Seven, eight, something like that. I don't know, nine. But been to a lot of nationals. Also might, I may or may not have skipped that Cleveland one. Cleveland. I got some funny Cleveland videos on my page. You should check those out. But I don't know, Cleveland may be in the News. I heard LeBron's golfing there and read into that. Whatever you like. Yeah, this is gonna be a month. And what's funny about it, right, is I remember when Fanatics Fest, you know, was first announced and everybody was like, wow, this is gonna kill the national. Or they're coming for the National. They're doing their own thing in the national and they're, they're, you know, they're going after the National. Okay. If you haven't watched it go back a year, I'll. Maybe I'll put it on the top of my YouTube. I had the guys who, you know, run the national on my, on my podcast on Hobby with Cage in the lead up to the 2025 national, they spoke, you know, glowingly about Fanatics. Loved being involved with Fanatics, love that Fanatics Fest was. Was happening, you know, love what Fanatics was doing for the hobby, what they were doing for, you know, just growing the entire thing and expected record numbers. And I'm sure that the national this year will do record numbers also, because it's one of those things, right? Even though it looks like on its face. And I guess what everybody wants is that war, that, oh, look at this. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. And two companies can operate in a similar space and both succeed. Hell, both thrive. And what's funny about that is, I think that's what you're seeing. I have not heard any conversation now in year three. I haven't seen any content about it. I haven't heard any, wow, Fanatics Fest is going to kill the National. And I can probably tell you that if we got someone from Fanatics in here, they would say that's not their goal. Why would they want that? Isn't the National a good thing? Isn't growing the space a good thing? Isn't Fanatics Fest a good thing? Aren't they both succeeding a good thing for the overall space? Doesn't The national having 120 or 150,000 people there, New people, new people spending headlines, news articles, news coverage, whatever it might be, doesn't that bring more people into it? You know, the national doesn't have a live selling app for breakers, but after the national, people come home, they talk to their friends. I went to this, I bought this. And maybe each person who went to the national talks to two or three new kids on their baseball team, and they're now on the Fanatics app. They're, they're, you know, they're out there breaking boxes. They're out there collecting cards. Maybe they're watching the fantastic content from Jeremy Lee and Adam on the Fanatics Live app. And Cajun is on there, too. Maybe they're out there. What? Maybe they. Maybe they're one of the lucky people that find my channel on, on. On YouTube. Like you lovely people who listen and watch me. Who knows? But what's funny about it is what looks on its face like a war, you know, like dueling interests. I mean, it really is the exact Opposite it's, you know, if one doing well, the other can do well also. And I'm going to jump into a current version of that in a second. But I sent my news out yesterday and I got some, you know, I got some fun, know, some fun messages back. Everybody likes the news. Go check it out. Everybody who shares it on their story. I appreciate you guys. A special shout out to Kerwood, an original listener from back in the Luca Tiger Brawn day sent me a message yesterday. I'm still listening, I'm still watching the shows. And he sent me a message which I loved, saying, you know, he's never been to a card show really. And he was, you know, listening to my content about going to card shows and it being a different vibe and you know, the Pokemon show and the, you know, the sports card show and going and seeing how, you know, a show in person is different than, you know, than what we see online, what we see, you know, on Instagram, Facebook, you name it. And he said he was thinking about going to, you know, maybe his first card show this weekend. So to Kurt Wood, because he said, you listen, I'm giving you a shout out here. Hit that show and then, you know, message me, let me know what you think about it. I hope it's not a disappointment. I'm sure it won't be because shows are fun. You get to talk to people. You get to see cards that you might not have otherwise seen. You get, you get to kind of see pricing in action as well. You know, you may have a card that you think is liquid. You bring it to a show and you show it to a bunch of dealers and they tell you that they don't want it. You might get a different impression of your cards or a card you didn't, you know, realize was going to be, hey, every dealer wants that one. That seems to happen to Ian, my son, a lot at shows. So quick little one minute shout out to a long time listener and fan. And if you're one of those guys that's kind of in the shadows and you're just listening and enjoying, send me a message. Maybe I'll give you a shout out too. It's up a follow fun little. A fun little fun little thing I wasn't expecting to do today. But I was happy to receive that message because, I mean, 413 of these follow a thousand Luca Tiger Brown episodes and you know, to hear from folks who have been with you since, since, you know, day one, you know, starting this on July 16th of the year 2000 you know, in two weeks I'll be doing this for six years, which is, you know, some people would make fun of me because I don't really have that many subscribers. So why do I keep doing this? And people do make fun of me. You should check out the comments. There's one guy who counts the amount of times I say the word fun and funny. And I do, I say it a lot. You want to know why? Because I'm funny and I hope you're having fun. So play a drinking game and take a shot every time I say any variants of the word fun. Oh, man. Well, and I laugh because if you can't have fun with this, what the hell are we doing here? Why are you listening to this? Why are you watching this if you're not having fun with it? I hope I'm bringing a smile to your day. I hope I'm bringing some, you know, bit of education, a bit of light heartedness to your day. And we pivot into this if Fanatics Fest and the national can get along. I enjoy the content of Boston Card Hunter. I don't agree with everything that he says. I don't agree with everything that he does. It's rare that I find someone else in the world besides myself that I agree with everything that they say and do. Hell, sometimes I don't agree with what I say and do. I'm that kind of guy, you know. But Boston Card Hunter, I definitely don't agree with a lot of what he says. I think a lot of it is shock value. I think a lot of it is, you know, attention grabbing. I think a lot of it is, you know, meant to get a reaction out of people and listen, that's a very successful way to get numbers. And he is very good at it. You know, he came on the scene years after me and many other content creators and his account has exploded. It has a, like I said, a shock value to it and people are drawn to that. I try not to shock people too much. Although my title today will be PSA Fanatics and the War that is Coming this Way, I can draw you in with that. It's not exactly clickbait because it's an interesting thing to think about it. And, you know, part of this conversation stems from a post that Boston Car Hunter made yesterday. It was around the same time I posted in my news that PSA was, you know, putting out their pricing for grading at the National. And you guys could check it, it's on their website. And Boston Card Hunter, who, you know, who does not Work for her psa, obviously, and, you know, does take a lot of shots at psa. Came out and made a video about how it's, you know, basically 40 cents worth of plastic and 30 seconds of your time and look how much they're charging you for it. There was a great comment in there, I think, from vvg, my. My friend who. Who is the Bob Ross art expert and Frank Thomas collector who said, you know, saying that is like saying a Picasso is only worth the value of the paint, the brushes and the canvas. You know, there. There's obviously added value to it. And I'm going to take that a step further. As someone who grades with PSA on site at the national, if I'm fanatics, I like that that's being done. I'm not taking a shot at it. It's definitely not a war that I want to have. There is no greater creation of liquidity than PSA grading on site. I will say that again at that national, at that show, the greatest creation of liquidity for the show is PSA grading cards on site. And it. There is no close second. Okay? People bring their cards, the cards are worth X, they add in the PSA charge, and the cards are then worth exponentially more after they are graded. Somebody brings in a card that's worth X raw, they pay $599, $1,000, 5,000, whatever. The charge is depending upon the card. And if they get a 10, hell, sometimes if they get a 9, if they get a 10, that card is worth exponentially more. They've just created value that is worth a lot. That is worth a lot more than the amount of plastic in the 30 seconds. PSA is providing a service. They're authenticating the card. They are grading the card. That card in their slab now has a different value than it was when it was raw. I'm not telling you anything you guys don't know. But the person who now has that card graded can walk around the show and shop it as an authenticated PSA 10. We know what it is. We know the auto is real. We know the card is a perfect 10. And they can sell it at the show, and they can sell it at the show for a lot more money than what they came in with with that raw card. They walked into the show, they could have sold that card raw. And here's the fun part. Sometimes people do sell those cards raw at the show. And the dealers take their raw cards that they buy and they grade them with psa. And those dealers are able to create Value and liquidity and money for themselves and sell the card at the show and benefit themselves. They're able to create an additional windfall, additional profit for themselves at the national by buying a raw card that they think is going to grade well and grade it there on site with psa. Beckett's there also. I will be taking cards to Beckett as well. All right. I'm not paid by psa. I'm not paid by Beckett. Just so that we're clear and transparent, at one time, I was paid by Beckett. At one time I was paid by sgc, which is now part of the collector's universe. And I am sponsored by Card Ladder, which is also part of the collect. So let's get all that out there. But Beckett, I'm going to use them. Psa. Every national I've been to, I've graded cards with psa. I'm sure this one is not going to be different. Last year, I graded many cards. Several of them were four figures to grade, just the grading fee, but I was happy with the grades on them. I. I sold almost all, maybe all of the cards that I had graded psa. Also, in years past, did a evaluation of, like, a crossover. I had a card in a Beckett 9. I was hopeful it would cross over to a PSA 9. They told me it wouldn't. That's valuable. I paid a small fee instead of paying a larger fee to be told no and cross it over to an 8, which I wouldn't want. So, not to get too far off, I understand the, hey, let's attack them. It's 30 seconds. They have a backlog, the whole deal. But here's what's fun. The goal should be everybody succeeding, or as many people succeeding as possible succeeding at the national or at any show. It takes different forms, right? You might find the card that you want for your collection. You might go hunting for cards. People like raw cards. They like shiny cards. They're filling in sets. There's a bunch of those out there. But for a lot of people going to the national, success is a fiscal success. They're dealers who are paying for a table. They want to make money. There are people who are traveling there to sell cards, to buy and sell cards. They're paying money to get in. They're paying money to travel there. And the weekend is a success if they leave with more money than they went with and they're able to cover their expenses. Grading on site and being successful with it. That is sometimes the difference between. Between being successful fiscally at that show or Not. That's why there's such a long line at PSA and all the prices more than last year. Maybe. But aren't your cards also worth a lot more than they were last year? Doesn't the value being added justify the prices? I believe it is. And I mean, I think it's a good thing for Fanatics. Just let's do a comparison. I've been lucky enough at the Fanatics Fest to get a Cactus Jack box that's a very similar creation of Liquidity. At Fanatics Fest, people who are able to buy a box of Fanatics exclusive Fanatics Fest exclusive product. You're able to buy a box for $400, $500 and sell it right there. Like there are signs. Every dealer wants to buy them because they're reselling them or they're breaking them. And you know, to go for four days and travel, hotel and tickets, you know, you could be spending a couple thousand dollars. But if you happen to get one of those boxes and sell it there on, you know, at the show, that's a liquidity event that is helping defray and or pay for all of your costs for the show, maybe open the box and get a monster hit and create even more liquidity. It's kind of the same thing at these shows. The companies do a very good job of injecting and infusing liquidity and money into the room that is then spent there. Those Fanatics Fest exclusives are a good thing because that's cash being put right in the room for people to spend. Somebody sells their Cactus Jack box or their Fanatics Fest exclusive tops box or their F1 box, they sell it there to and boom, they have money to spend, you know, right there in the room. I give a headline of PSA fanatics and the war that's coming, but the exact opposite is what should happen. Fanatics and PSA should realize that they are both part of the same machine. They are the behemoths in this. They are the two big companies. And for lack of a better way of saying it, they are the companies that this whole thing relies on. Fanatics is making the cards and PSA is grading the cards. I know there are other card graders, but they really do not matter at the moment. I mean, this could change. I'm old enough to remember when Beckett was the, the gold standard of grading. So I, I guess things can change. But for right now, if you want cards, you're buying Fanatics cards. If you want your cards graded, more likely than not, you're grading them with psa. So those companies are very important for the health of what we're doing. And, you know, listen, the headline is sensational, but it, you know, it's funny because, you know, anytime PSA does something, Boston Car Hunter comes out and, you know, boom, hey, they got pricing. Let's attack the pricing. I get it. I guess, you know, there are a lot of people who don't like how much PSA charges for the most part, that people don't use them. What's funny is to my friend, Boston Card Hunter. I know you grade cards and you grade autographs with them and then you sell them and you probably get more because they're in PSA slabs and you paid for it. I mean, maybe you don't pay thousands of dollars to grade at the National. Maybe you won't be at the national, who knows? But I got to tell you, just from my own experience, maybe I'll hop on your next live and we can kind of have a back and forth on this. But I've always done well grading at the National. PSA has always been a good thing for me. And you have to be smart about it. You know what I mean? Like, you can't grade every card at the National. You have to, you know, be smart about what card you are grading and whether or not the value that's going to be added by getting a 10 on that card is worth grading at the National. There are very few events where this happens. I mean, I, I don't know if they do it outside of the national, but you can drop a card off that day and get it that day. You drop it off early in the morning, you pick it up end of day. They have pricing for end of day, not just end of show. If they're doing it right there on site, that's a monumental task also. And, you know, to say that it's 30 cents, 30 seconds and 40 cents worth of plastic, it misses the point. That is a humongous endeavor to bring the machines and bring the staff and set up and bring the people and, you know, have the ability to grade the cards, churn the cards and get them in and out. You know, stop by the PSA booth and see the machine that's working. I'm not getting paid to say this, but it's just one of those cool things about the national, and I'm going to spend some time talking about other cool things in National. Cold is kind of like, you know, part one of that. No, I'm not getting paid by the national to do that. But just I enjoy going to Fanatics Fest. I enjoy going to National. So I'll be talking about both of those in the coming weeks as we lead up to them. My son is thrilled about going to Fanatics Fest. He will be there Saturday and Sunday with me. So if you guys are going, send me a dm, we can meet up. There was some really cool soccer activations at the last one. Premier League was there. They had this cool like soccer kicking thing where you know, my son, you know, set the record for his age group of how many like, you know, green lights he kicked and they sent him tickets to a Premier League game. Like that's amazing as, just as a, you know, part of the admission, you know, he did this little game and, and, and got tickets to a game. Pretty nuts. Then there are, you know, things like that all over the place at Fanatics Fest. I'm sure there'll be new ones this year that we'll be able to, you know, to experience and look forward to and. Yeah, well I'm gonna research those and, and bring a couple up over the next couple episodes. Yeah. So we've hit 20 minutes. The war that is coming. My hope is that it's, it's the same type of war that, that while the markets are open, we have with Trump in charge. We only seem to have war on weekends when the markets are closed. It's kind of crazy. There is no war. And the truth of the matter is I would love it if everybody took a step back and realized this hobby's in a really good place. I mean PSA has a 12 million card backlog. Fanatics is, is, is doing great. I mean every time they release a new product that sells, it sells through, it sells well. I mean I'm loving Baseball Dynasty. You know, they're doing a really good job and I'm excited to see the high end football and basketball products now that they've taken those over. Not just the chromes. I'm excited to see what they do for patch autos. I'm excited to see what Tops version of, you know, Flawless is going to be. I expect it to be Dynasty and I expect it to be awesome just like their baseball dynasty is. I will be a buyer on that if I can get it. So there you go guys. That's my, my feelings today as we turn the calendar page from June into July. I don't know if you can, you know, get the sense from me this is going to be a good month. Like I'm excited about these shows. I will be at both of them. I hope some of you will be there, too. If you are, send me a message and let's meet up. Maybe have a cigar. Oh, yeah. All right, guys, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Hope you all have a good day. Take care, everybody. I hope you had fun. Take care, guys.